email: jpinho(at)igc.gulbenkian.pt

Short Bio
I graduated in Cell and Molecular Biology from Faculdade Ciências e Tecnologias – Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Faculty of Sciences and Technology – New University of Lisbon). During this time, I was awarded a scholarship of Initiation to Research at REQUINTE under supervision of Sofia Pauleta developing a project studying the changing of protein function, in electron transfer complexes, in role of the protein structure.
I performed a master degree in Neuroscience from Faculdade de Medicina – Universidade de Lisboa (Faculty of Medicine – University of Lisbon). For my master thesis I joined the Neuroscience Unit at Instituto de Medicina Molecular (IMM), under the supervision of Maria José Diógenes and Luísa Lopes, where I studied the role of NMDA(2B) receptors dysfunction in Long-Term Potentiation upon aging.
I also developed a research fellowship in the Medical Research Center with Isaura Tavares about the modulation by the opioid and noradrenergic pathways in the pain behavior.
After 2 years in Rui Oliveira’s lab working in fear conditioning in Zebrafish, I started my PhD in Behavior Biology studying the mechanism underlying social and asocial learning.

Research Interests
My research interests are the role of the social context in learning processes. I would like to understand how animals learn (behavior), the mechanisms involved in different types of learning (transcriptomically and epigenetically, and by using transgenic models) and what is the impact of the social context in learning processes (social behavior). In other way, I will look to different phases of the learning process: encoding, processing and retrieval understanding the timing to each mechanism in social learning.